https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0810-8457
![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1987, the Printing and Kindred Industries Union (PKIU), Federal Executive Committee, reluctantly concluded that membership decline and the resultant fall in income meant that the union needed to find an amalgamation partner. In common with many Australian unions, which felt similarly compelled to merge, there was initially a lack of consensus over a preferred merger partner. In most other unions these disagreements were eventually resolved, an amalgamation deal negotiated, and membership endorsement of the merger secured. This was not the case in the PKIU. Instead the union remained in intense internal conflict, throughout the seven-year amalgamation process. Scholars have suggested that the PKIU’s amalgamation fissures were caused by political, economic, industrial and institutional disagreements. Other authors have gone further and argue that dramatic shifts in the PKIU’s and other unions amalgamation policies, during the 1980s and 1990s, were the result of alterations in the strengths of different internal political factions, or the rejection of a union’s merger policy by the membership. This article, while accepting that political, economic, industrial and institutional factors all influenced the PKIU’s internal debate, puts forward an alternative hypothesis. It asserts that micro-political factors, specifically personal animosities, friendships and loyalties, played a significant role in determining the eventual choice of an amalgamation partner, and the contrasting results of its two merger ballots.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Printing unions journals and reports
AMWU Journal 1995 to 1997
PKIU Journal 1974 to 1995
NSW PKIU Branch Journal 1967 to 1995
AMWU Biennial National Conference Report 1996
PKIU Federal Council Reports 1971 to 1995
Glossary
Blue: argument, fight or strike action.
Bar, wouldn’t have a: would not countenance an alternative
Dill: idiot or fool.
Dirty: angry.
Dropped the bundle: failed to grasp an opportunity.
Flick, give the: get rid of something.
Galah: fool, silly person. This derogatory term refers to the Galah bird whose antics and squawking is commonly perceived as foolish.
Hoon: derogatory term used to describe someone engaged in loutish behaviour.
Retrenchment: redundancy.
Serve: verbal attack.
Shonkey: dubious or underhand.
Shoe in: certain to succeeded
Spat the dummy: lost their temper.
Spew/Spewing: vomit, or intense anger.
Spill: argument or electoral contest
Notes
1. Chapels were the PKIU’s local workplace units of organisation. The chapels historically were designed to represent workers in the different trades and crafts that existed within a workplace. In the craft areas of the printing industry the chapels and their locally elected representative the Father or Mother of Chapel (FoC/MoC), performed a supervisory and training role. This role dated back to the PKIU’s British printing union roots. Here, from the 16th Century onwards, printing craft guilds and their successor printing craft unions, trained and managed apprentices entering a specific printing trade. These training and supervisory roles were retained by the chapels and their FoC/MoC, in both Britain and Australia, until the latter decades of the twentieth century.
2. To avoid the PKIU rulebook’s insistence that all officers had to be members and face election, NSW appointed ‘recruitment officers’ on staff grades. This allowed the NSW branch leadership to appoint recruitment officers who possessed recruiting experience, from outside of the union.
3. The Australian Industrial Relations Commission was a quasi-judicial body which could bindingly arbitrate on wages and conditions across all the various industrial sectors that made up the Australian economy. The AIRC also had the power to bindingly arbitrate in industrial disputes which involved a company that operated in more than one State.
4. A union’s de-registration would effectively mean that they were unable to use the Federal arbitration system. Their membership coverage protection and use of the Federal industrial awards system would also, effectively, be removed.
5. The Australian Bureau of Statistics formally stopped collecting data on Trade Unions after 1996.
6. The Federal and State ‘awards’ systems were administered by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and their State counterparts. These were quasi-judicial bodies who could bindingly arbitrate on wages and conditions across all the various industrial sectors that made up the Australian economy. The Federal and State Commissions also had the power to bindingly arbitrate in industrial disputes.
7. From 2002 to 2017, mergers between Australian Federal unions have remained at a low level, with the majority of amalgamation activity involving State-based unions merging into larger Federal unions.
8. I worked as a National Officer for the Banking Insurance and Finance Union from 1989 to 1994. Subsequently I was employed as an Organising Officer, Senior Organiser, London Regional Secretary and a National Officer of the GMB Union from 1997 to 2009. Between1985 and 1989, I had been a Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) Branch Secretary and Regional Trade Group delegate. I was also a member of the TGWU Broad Left faction. After starting work at the Banking, Insurance and Finance Union (BIFU) I became a Branch Secretary and London Regional Council member of Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff (APEX), which merged in 1989 with the GMB Union.
9. In 1991, the Amalgamated Metal Workers’ Union (AMWU) changed its title to the Metals & Engineering Workers’ Union (MEWU) after merging with the Association of Drafting, Supervisory & Technical Employees (ADSTE). Then it became the Automotive Metals & Engineering Union (AMEU) following an amalgamation with the Vehicle Builders Employees Federation of Australia (VBEF) in 1993, before changing its name again to the Australian Food Manufacturing and Engineering Union (AFMEU) following a merger in 1993 with the Confectionery Workers & Food Preservers Union of Australia (CWFPU). The union is now known as the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union but is still often referred to by its members and officers as, ‘The Metals’.
10. Printing Industries Employees Union of Australia. One of the craft union fore-runners of the PKIU.
11. Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance.
12. The PKIU Federal Council had passed a motion supporting the amalgamation and prohibiting campaigning against the amalgamation by union employees.
13. One of the most notable examples occurred in 2011, when the Queensland branch of the Public Services Union (PSU) seceded from the Federal PSU and joined the Australian Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union (ALHMU) later that year.
14. Cahill was to be defeated in a controversial election for the Federal Printing Divisional Secretary post in 1998, by the Victorian branch’s Michael Brown. His defeat occurred after NSW and their allies had, again, chosen not to oppose Cahill for what would have been his last term in office, before retirement. Following Brown’s election, Cahill successfully undertook legal action over a leaflet that made libellous allegations against him, and which was received by every Printing Division member on the day they received their ballot paper. Subsequently the AMWU Printing Division Executive and the Union’s Federal Executive agreed to remove Brown from office, over this and other, alleged, election malpractices.
15. The PKIU in addition to its six state branches also had a branch for members in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). The ACT had been created to allow the nation’s capital city, Canberra, to sit outside the State boundaries of NSW and Victoria.
16. As GMB London Regional Secretary I was part of the group of senior officers which negotiated with Amicus and the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) over a potential three-way merger to create a new ‘super’ union in in 2006. The GMB eventually did not join the merger between the TGWU and Amicus to create Unite the Union in 2007 (see Undy, Citation2018). I also played a similar role in negotiations with Unison in 2007 which proved unsuccessful and a smaller part in the successful amalgamation of the General Union of Loom Overlookers into the GMB in 2007 and the unsuccessful merger negotiations with the National Union of Mineworkers in 2007–2008.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ed Blissett
Ed Blissett is senior lecturer in employment relations at the University of Hertfordshire. Prior to taking up this post Ed was, for over 20 years, a lay activist and then a senior Regional and National officer for three of Britain’s largest trade unions. His roles included 4 years as Regional Secretary of the GMB London Region. These positions saw him play a central part in local and national union policy-making and granted him extensive first-hand knowledge of those factors which shape union merger policy. His background as a senior union officer also assisted him in gaining unprecedented access to the Australian, Printing and Kindred Industries Union, which allows this article to give a unique insight into rich complexity of factors that determine union merger polices.